Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy
by Theonewhodidnotdoit
Summary: Jameson Locke has lead an extraordinary life. Every one of his experiences has shaped him, made him the man he is today. But some more than others. From his home on Jericho VII to the snowy, warring slopes of Kamchatka, this is his story.
1. Chapter 1

**Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 1**

 **Just my personal little take on the origins of Spartan Jameson Locke, structured around the general story points we've been given. It will consist of five parts all at different points in Locke's life. Hope you enjoy!**

"Jamie?"

I'd heard her coming up the stairs. I'd known it was her from the way she didn't step on the one step that groaned when you stood on it. If it had been the matron, or Dr. Archer, I'd have hidden by now. Instead, I just kept laying here, on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

The door creaked as she nudged it open, peering into the gloom of the wood-panelled dormitory. Rows upon rows of small single beds filled the long room, the only light being a single shaft of evening light filtering in through the skylight in the middle of the room. It was enough. She saw me, the little six-year-old black boy skulking in the semi-dark.

"Jamie!" She cried out, or would have if her tone hadn't been hushed. "Jamie, the matron called everyone down for dinner five minutes ago, aren't you coming?"

"Not hungry." I murmured. She sighed, and walked over to my bed, sitting down by my feet.

"Come on, Jamie, you've got to eat." I didn't respond. She tried shaking my foot. "Jamie..." I still didn't do anything. She sighed again. "Jamie, look at me."

She'd never really been assertive with me before, so I turned my head a fraction to look at her.

Lucy Paver. Twenty years old. Round brown eyes that gave away her Indian heritage, light brown skin, hair obscured by a faded pink patterned scarf that went down to her shoulders. Usually, she was a meek young woman, happy to be bossed around, doing any odd job asked of her by her superiors at the orphanage, but now her gaze was persistent.

"Jamie, I know you're upset, but you have to eat. If you don't, you're just going to feel worse."

I held her gaze for a moment, then went back to looking at the ceiling. Her hand went to clasp mine as it lay, motionless, by my side.

"Jamie, please. Just... Try not to think about it..."

"I want to think about it." She seemed a little shocked. Her grip loosened slightly.

"Why?"

"I don't want to forget anything."

"But... Jamie-"

"I want to remember everything. Dr. Archer said I probably won't get to go back home ever again, and even if I did, it'd be really different, so I want to remember it." She smiled at me then. A sad, sad smile.

"...Why don't you tell me about it, then? Your home?" I didn't say anything for another moment. She probably would have given up and left soon enough if Id kept at it, but I gave in, sat up against the headboard and started talking in that slow, blurred drone of the child.

"...We had a house. It was nice, we had a kitchen, and a bathroom, and I had my own bedroom. It was really big, like, half the size of the dining room."

"That's big."

"Yeah. Mommy and daddy had a bigger room, though. It was right next to mine, so I could go and sleep there if I had a nightmare. Sometimes, though, daddy would wake up and take me outside, and we'd lie down on the grass and count the moons."

"How many moons were there?"

"Four. Sometimes it looked like there was more because of the sea, but you could tell they weren't real because they were greeny-looking. Daddy said that he'd been on two of the real moons, but he didn't tell me which ones."

"That sounds cool."

"Yeah. Then we'd go back to bed and wake up in the morning and he'd make all of us pancakes for breakfast. Then I'd have to go to school, and mommy would have to go to work, and then I'd come home and play." I stopped for a second.

"But I know that part. That's not the part I have to try to remember." She blinked.

"What do you have to try to remember?"

"The last bit. The different bit." She froze. "The bit where everything was on fire." She was clearly uncomfortable, but let me continue. "There were these big purple ships in the sky, and daddy said that we had to go now because they weren't friendly and that they were going to hurt us. We had to run to the square, and there were loads of little green ships taking people away, and we had to try and get to one. We got to one but the man said there was only room for one more and mommy said that I had to go alone for a while, and that they loved me." I was silent again, for longer this time. "Then, the big purple ships started shooting at the ground, and my ship took off, and mommy and daddy were- Were-" I'd started to sniff, breaking my flow, tears welling in my eyes, and before I knew it, Lucy's arms were around me, her voice soothing me.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, you're alright..." I sniffed again, wiping the tears away before they could fall.

"They're dead." I said, with gravity unbecoming of my age. "That's why I'm in here, in an orphanage. And I want to remember that."

"Why?" She whispered, her arms wrapped around me.

"So I won't ever think they're ever coming back and be sad about it when they don't. Because they never will."

Neither of us said anything for a while. I continued sobbing into her shoulder.

"Hey, Jamie. You want to hear about where I grew up?"

"...Yes please."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

I went to bed hungry that night. But I didn't care. I had far too much to think about. Lucy had told me about her home, a big city in the outer colonies. She'd lived there with her dad in a small flat, and had got out of there the moment her dad had thought their planet might be next. They'd moved from planet to planet, hitching rides to get as far into the inner colonies as possible, stopping to work and make money for the next trip. She'd been running for years, and had said that it made her feel terrible, alone and powerless.

She said she couldn't imagine how I felt. Truth be told, I was having trouble myself. After she had to leave to do the matron's bidding, I settled back into position, and got back to thinking. Thinking and remembering. The other boys in the orphanage soon came upstairs with full stomachs, some energetic or violent, others morose. It was easy to tell which ones had been lied to and which hadn't.

I lay there, like the eye of the hurricane, lost in memories. The takeoff in the Pelican. Me, pressed to the hatch window by the pressure of the other bodies around me, unable to turn away. I watched my mother and father recede, their eyes never leaving mine, their hands joined. I watched the CCS-class Covenant battlecruiser manoeuvre slowly into place above the town I called home. I watched the glassing beam charge. I watched the column of plasma and death descend, and wipe away every trace of my old life, leaving nothing but smooth, luminescent scars of grey glass behind. I watched the last two Pelicans behind us fall out of the sky and in turn be cauterised. It was all gone. Mom, dad, our home, everything I had ever known.

I cried myself to sleep that night. After that, no more tears came. No more thinking or remembering was needed.

The Covenant had burned it into my memory forever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 2**

"Come on, man, let us see, let us see!"

"Quiet! I don't want the Matron finding out and taking it away, okay!"

I opened my eyes a fraction to see a couple of fellow orphan boys barge quietly into the room, three crowding around one more, surrounding and circling him like snapping dogs. The central boy held a bundle of rags, barely visible in the evening gloom that filtered through the skylight. From the sound of it, he had contraband. Nobody tended to come up here in the evening, being busy with chores, or just having gone out to escape the crushing atmosphere of the orphanage. Evidently he wanted to show it off, whatever it was, to his friends in secrecy.

I kept my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep. They hadn't seemed to have noticed me yet, and when or if they did, they'd be less inclined to threaten me into silence. I concentrated on their voices, the shuffle of their boots. I could barely recall their names, but their voices were enough to get their faces. They were a variety of ages, all a few years older than me, on the back end of their teens, hailing from all over the outer colonies. Their footsteps grew louder, then fainter as they walked past me. The distinct creak of the bunk across and to the left of me's springs sounded three times, and one of them spoke again, still hushed.

"Alright man, we're up here, now show it!"

"Alright, but shut it!" There was a faint flop as a piece of cloth was discarded, and a small intake of breath from the posse.

"Man, that is cool."

"No shit. Where'd you get it, Jason?"

"That's a secret. But I'm telling you, this is the real deal." My curiosity got the better of me, and I opened my eyes a sliver. In the dark, I could see the shapes of the boys, and in one of their hands, a gleam of silver. "Military issue M6E handgun, and ten 12.7x40mm rounds to go with it." He slid the magazine out, and popped a single brass bullet out. "One of these could blow your head clean off." One of the boys gave a low whistle.

"What're you gonna do with it?"

"Probably take it out into the woods, do some target practice. Might have to get a silencer."

"I don't know if you can get silencers for guns like that..."

"Yeah, you can. They're not easy to find though, might have to call in a favour or two." One of the other boys gave the gun-toting one a little shove.

"Come off it. Since when were you in with the shady underworld arms dealer crowd?"

"Nothing shady about it. My guy's ex-UNSC. He used to be a quartermaster, still got a bunch of stuff left over."

"Nothing shady, huh? How's about selling guns to minors? How old are you, Jason, like fifteen?"

"I'm seventeen, shitface. And believe me, the practice I'm going to get done with this thing is going to good use."

"Why?"

"In three months, when my birthday rolls around, I'm outta this dump, hopping on a freighter to the nearest big city, and signing up for the corps."

"Why the hell would you wanna do that?"

"Are you stupid? Why am I here? Why are any of us here? The Covenant killed my family, and I want back at them. UNSC's the only thing that can do anything about them, and they need everybody they can get."

Hearing that, I felt a small fire light in my gut. After digging up the old news reports on the glassing of my home, I'd found out that the UNSC had withdrawn just before my town was hit. They'd been destroyed, and had run off, limping, tail between their legs. They couldn't protect anyone.

I did understand how Jason felt, though. I was itching to spill Covvie blood myself, though I still had three more years to go until I could leave. But I sure as hell wasn't going to the UNSC. They had the best resources available to all of humanity, and they couldn't protect anyone. They just pulled back, over and over, leaving a trail of burning worlds behind them.

I wanted to help, in a way that would really matter. Working behind enemy lines, taking out key targets, the kind of stealth ops the UNSC was too bloated and bureaucratic to do itself. A few bullets in the right places, and suddenly the next colony on the alien's list had two more months to evacuate.

But that was just my pipe dream. I was fifteen. I had nothing. No training, no weapons, no plans. Jason here... He had one out of three.

I settled down and waited for them to leave. The next day was going to be an eventful one.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

It wasn't hard to persuade Jason to give up his friend's name and location once I said I'd tell the matron he had a gun under his bed. One oath of secrecy later, I had someone to see downtown. After school, or really just a place the orphanage kids went to keep them off the streets for five hours a day, I headed out to see the guy. At the address Jason had given me, I found a mildewed white cottage sitting at the edge of our ramshackle town, wedged between us and the local wood, paint peeling off it in big, fragile curls.

Inside was a big hunk of flesh that called itself Moe. He stomped around his house with a cigarette butt glued to his fingers, cleaning his stock of guns, shirtless. Apparently he hadn't noticed his glory days in the army were over, so his belly now hung over the belt of his battered military fatigue trousers like a great pink precipice. I told him Jason sent me, and he said he was hesitant about becoming the cause of some kind of armed gang war.

"I don't want to buy anything." I told him. "Not yet."

"Eh? Then why are you here?"

"I want to see what you've got. At some point, I want to buy a pistol and a sniper rifle."

"Why? Want to join up with the UNSC too? They give you what you need when you ship out, kid."

"No. I want to go freelance." He laughed at me for a good two minutes, a whooping, hacking laugh, but opened his eyes and saw I was dead serious. He basically gave up after that, and showed me two things he said he'd keep on the side for me. A M6E pistol, like Jason's, and a SRS99C-S2 AMB sniper rifle. He said if I was planning on going freelancing, they'd be the easiest to sustain.

I thanked him and was ready to leave, and start saving up, but he stopped me.

"You serious about this, kid? You ready to kill people for money? I mean, I've seen a few stone-cold killers pass through that orphanage of yours, but you don't seem the type."

"I'm not planning on killing people." He fixed me with a beady stare, and took a drag on his cigarette.

"Ah, revenge story. Well, if you ain't going to the UNSC, feel free to swing by and do some target practice. I've got a target range out back. If you're gonna throw your life away, might as well make sure you're gonna take as many of them alien bastards with you as possible."

"Thank you."

"Pleasures all mine, kid. Hey, what's your name?"

"Jameson Locke." He grinned.

"Now, that's a merc's name if ever I heard one. You're gonna go far, kid."

I don't think he'll ever know how right he was.


	3. Chapter 3

**Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 3**

Taking the pair of polarised binoculars from my eyes, I began to wonder if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

In the darkness of the night, I was perched atop a rocky cliff, dressed in full black, my skin smeared with mud and dark paint. Below me was a fifty-strong Covenant camp, holed up in the ruins of a town. A cluster of Covenant cruisers loomed in the sky far away, squatting over a mountain range like hermits. The planet had been all but evacuated now, with only a few thousand people on the other main continent remaining. The UNSC was maintaining a minimal presence in the system, positioned in such a way that they could pressure the comparatively smaller Covenant fleet into staying hidden on this side of the planet, without risking anything by approaching.

In other words, they were letting the Covenant slowly close their ground forces in towards the last populated areas, leaving the civilians to hope for another fleet of evac ships that might never come. As soon as the Covenant had what they wanted, the glassing would begin, and there was no telling when that would happen.

I was in deep. Very, very deep. In order to get this position above the camp, I'd had to kill over sixty grunts, a dozen jackals and two elites. I was dangerously low on ammo, and two miles away from my ship, a modified exoatmospheric-capable Owl. It was a miracle I wasn't dead yet. But my prize was almost within reach. I'd been tracking him for months, and here he was.

I didn't have to wait long for him to show himself. Out of one of the broken buildings he walked, light from the planet's two yellow moons shining on his crimson armour. Tal Panomee. A very senior commander in the Fleet of Righteous Vigilance. Though the Elite's custom of high-ranking officers regularly doing field duty probably had many benefits when it came to tactical consideration and morale, in this case, it was simply making my job a whole lot easier.

He walked somewhat uncomfortably into the centre of the road. The slightly lower gravity was probably not what he was used to. He looked around, seemingly just taking a moment to enjoy the night. I made my preparations as fast as I could. I might not get a chance like this for hours.

I slung my sniper rifle off my back, slid back a little and set up the bipod. Even after ten years, I still had the gun Moe had sold me. I felt around on my hip for the bandolier that held my specialised ammunition, and slid a single bullet out. A high-velocity, custom-tooled, armour piercing disruptor round. Designed with questionable intent by an inner colony engineer to pierce energy shields, body armour, and anything else that might be between it and the target's brain. Unfortunately, not silencer-compatible. It was my last one. I just hoped that Tal hadn't upgraded his shield generator recently. The bullet couldn't quite pierce the newest models, a lesson I'd learned the hard way. If I needed to follow up with a regular shot, then I was bound to be caught. It had to be perfect, or I was done for. Of course, it was still a very real possibility I was already done for, but that was of no concern for now.

I hastily loaded the round, crushed the stock to my shoulder, took a deep breath, and synced up the scope with my smart-link contact lens. The monster's face leapt into view, mandibles twitching.

The shot was clear. There was no wind. The rest of his troops were nowhere to be seen.

I centred the reticule over his head. My grip tightened on the gun. For a split second, he turned, and it seemed as though he was looking right at me, and then he had a hole in his head. The boom of my rifle, the flash as his shields flared and broke, and the far-off slap of his armoured body hitting the ground. A sudden barrage of sensory information, and I was off haring through the brush in the direction of my ship. I was already twenty metres away by the time I managed to sling my rifle back over my shoulder, the timing roughly coinciding with the rapidly receding shouts of Fal's subordinates.

My blood thumped in my ears, my breath burned in my lungs. But alongside the welling exhaustion, came a bursting elation. It was done. I'd pulled it off. The leadership of this entire continent's operation was down, all thanks to me.

I caught my breath as I was forced to hide from a squad of grunts, heading in the direction of the camp, probably returning from patrol, trying to catch me in a net before I slipped away. Before long, I was back on board my Owl, and had burst up into the sky. I had some rudimentary stealth systems, really no more than a decrepit baffler and some heat sinks, so I engaged them, and set the autopilot to take me across the expanse of the planet's great ocean to the largest remaining city on the planet. I wasn't in the mood for flying. The post-adrenaline rush exhaustion was setting in.

I stumbled back into the cramped troop transport area of the Owl, a space I had turned into a rudimentary bedroom. A dirty mattress sat on the floor, next to a few books and a toolbox. I slumped down onto the simple bed, wriggled to get a jutting spring out of my kidney, and just lay there a moment. I soon fished a rag out to half-heartedly clean the camo from my face, but for just a little while, I let myself bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. I slept well that night. Very well.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Arriving back at the stone, metropolitan hub of any soul unlucky enough to still be on the planet, I was beginning to wonder how long the place was going to last, even if the Covenant never arrived. Landing permission wasn't even a problem, the parking bays were mostly empty and the city services had been among the first to leave, so one could just touch down and let the AI's lock up. With a lack of any civic authority, sooner or later there were good to be riots. The people were on edge as it was, waiting anxiously for a rescue fleet. At this point, I was in as much need as they were. Slipspace-capable dropships weren't entirely unheard of, but they were extremely rare, expensive, and pretty much entirely UNSC property, used for their special ops. My Owl was a good ship, but not capable of getting me anywhere near the next system.

I drowned my concerns with tedium. I needed resupply. Wandering through the streets, it was all I could do not to make eye contact. These people were desperate, many scraping as much money together as possible, just in case their ticket off-world had to be bought. The place was ready to blow.

By the time I'd bought fuel, ammo and supplies at an exhaustive markup, it was nearly noon. I hadn't eaten since the previous evening. Rather than eating cheap recycled protein slop back at my own ship, I decided a little celebration was in order. I slipped out of the sun into the most reputable place I could find, a small, boxy cantina. Never did low-quality synthetic meat and watered-down beer taste so good.

Halfway through my meal, I heard a crackly local news report coming from an ancient radio on the bar. Retreating civilians were reporting a stall in Covenant advances, glimpses of abandoned camps, even retreats. From the sound of it, Tal's death had set them back quite a bit. The news then switched to the usual fare about the off-world negotiations for an evacuation flotilla, which were apparently going well. The UNSC had offered loans of a considerable sum to a private corporation to manage the extraction. It seemed they wanted their pressure fleet back. This system was of no strategic importance, so it was surprising they'd stayed this long. Rescue would be a couple of months, at best a few weeks away.

All good news. I got back to my meal.

Then came the big interruption.

A man came and sat down at my table, opposite me. I'd been careful to sit away from the locals, tucked away in the corner. He was either looking for a fight, or looking for a merc. I perused him out of the corner of my eye for a second, as he shuffled into place. Caucasian male, mid-to-late thirties. Brown, thinning hair. Dressed a little too practically. He was an off-worlder. Here for a reason, and if he had even half a brain, it would have to be a good one.

"Can I help you?" He looked up, and I got my first full look at his face. Snakelike blue-green eyes, thin mouth, and skin that, although roughened, was free of the ingrained grime and tiredness of a resource-starved outer colonist. He smiled at me.

"Yes, I think you can." He gestured to the radio, eyes still fixed on me. "You hear that just now about the Covenant? Pulling back?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"Well, some... Colleagues of mine happen to have the equipment necessary to decipher the Covenant battlenet feeds, and we just overheard that one of their leaders was assassinated last night. Apparently by a human."

Whoever he was, whether he knew it or not, he was feeding me his identity in spades. 'Colleagues' implied corporate or special military. But an interest in Covenant movements, and the means to tap and translate them? This screamed secret service. This screamed ONI. But I couldn't be certain. Not yet.

"That's odd." I played the monosyllabic merc for the time being, concentrating on something else entirely. My pistol sat in its holster on my thigh, and remotely, I activated its smart-link scope. Immediately, one eye was presented with an image of my companion's legs. I shifted slightly, scanning him. I managed to glimpse his own weapon, and there was suddenly very little doubt in my mind. A black polymer silenced pistol. Silencers on M6 models were as rare as they come. This guy was ONI, through and through.

"It is, isn't it? You know, with this new breathing room, I think my associates may have a job for you."

"Me?"

"Yes. You were noted by the docking AIs to be arriving at the approach vector, time and place concurring almost exactly with the assassinated Covenant leader's projected location and time of death. This makes you the ideal candidate for a specific retrieval mission." So it was work. It was always work.

"You know, if you'd done your homework properly, you would know I'm not the type who'd throw in with ONI at a moment's notice." I coupled the reveal with a withering look. He just grinned.

"Not bad, but to be fair, I was making it pretty easy. What sort of payment are we looking at, then?"

"You can keep your payment. I'm not helping the UNSC." I gave him a hard stare. He looked disappointed.

"You know, your file said you were unreasonable... But I don't think that's true. I think you just don't like the government."

"Hole in one."

"Well, allow me to rephrase it. Base fee is fifteen thousand credits. On top of that, you get to save thousands of lives." That caught me.

"What?"

"That private rescue fleet is only throwing in enough ships to evac eighty percent of the population here. That's a lot of people left behind. With the right leverage, the cover fleet stationed in this system could be persuaded to assist in the evacuation, but that's a considerable risk to them. Saving lives is all well and good, but when you're fighting a war, you have to make sacrifices."

"Make your point." Measured terseness made its way into my tone.

"My point is, help me retrieve a high-level asset from an abandoned military base here, and ONI will pull the strings necessary to get you, me, the asset, and everybody else on this planet off-world before the end of the month."

I didn't like the idea of working with ONI. They represented everything I hated about the UNSC. Secrecy. Hunger for power. A calculating approach to the value of human life. But I didn't have much of a choice.

"Why me? You could have a strike team, hell, even some ODSTs on this job if you wanted. You've got to have some kind of advanced stealth tech." He grimaced.

"Circumstances are... Difficult. The guys at HQ have to live by the math, there's no other way. In my case, the risk is apparently not worth it. They did, however, give me you." He straightened, rolling his head back a bit and crossing his arms. "So. You in?"

"Any enemy presence?"

"Other than me? Heh..." He dropped the joke quickly. "Covenant are after the asset too, probably the only reason this place isn't a ball of glass yet. You set them back a bit, but the sooner we get there the less of a risk we're taking, you get it? Now, can I get an answer?" I pondered the offer for a moment. There was a high chance I'd not be getting off the planet in time if I didn't help.

"...Alright. You've got a deal."

"Excellent. I'll be round by your ship to give you details tonight. See you later, Mr Locke."

He got up and left without looking back. I looked down at the remains of my meal. I'd lost my appetite.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

As soon as I got back to my ship I did a bug check. A solid hour later, I had found nothing solid, but a few suspect nuts and bolts lying around did soon find themselves nestled in the thruster exhaust pipes. When I left, they'd be burned or left to rot here.

True to his word, the ONI agent arrived at eight o'clock planetary mean time. I was waiting with the loading door down. I wasn't planning on letting him on it.

"You ready?" I shouldered my already triple-checked pack and nodded. "This way."

He lead me to another hangar bay, this one sealed up tight. Inside was a short black dropship, of a designation I didn't recognise. He popped it open and climbed aboard, gesturing me to do the same.

We took off and quickly reached a blinding speed. I couldn't see any readouts on the dashboard, presumably only available to my benefactor via neural link to prevent me knowing too much, so I could only guess at our actual velocity, but we were tearing over the clouds at an alarming rate.

After some time, we began our descent. The air was thick with falling snow, a veritable blizzard, and the ground didn't look much better. This was somewhere in the southern tundras. What sort of base needed this level of isolation?

"Don't worry about the cold, base is just over that hill." The agent said to me. "We get in, grab the asset, and get out."

"Exactly what are we looking for?"

"That's classified." He grunted.

"What does it look like, then?"

"Depends. If they packed it up before the evac call came, then it's just gonna be a black case, bout thirty by thirty by forty big. Artefact code X2-034. If not... Well, you'll know it when you see it."

He cracked the cockpit open, and the freezing cold hit us. He tossed me a pair of googles, and leapt out into the snow. Pulling them on, I followed, the door sliding shut and sealing behind me.

We struggled up the hill, the chilling wind whipping at us, trying to cast us down, out of its wake. My legs pumped beneath me. In and out, as quick as possible, grab the crate and run. One simple job and the whole planet gets a happy ending...

XXXXXXXXXXXX

But of course, it was never that easy.

"Move, move! Come on, get your ass in gear!" I dashed through the door, empty sniper rifle loosely bashing against my back as it swung on its strap. I kept running, every breath a frenzied, burning gasp for life, and the spook behind me slashed a plastic card through a scanner, locking the door behind us. From the other side came an enraged bestial roar, and the telltale hiss of an energy sword being unsheathed.

Zealots.

We'd managed to get in and find the artefact easily enough. The case was locked up tight, so no sneak peek for me, but just as we were about to leave, we turned and saw a single grunt ultra. Of course, we shot him dead immediately, but he'd already screamed, bringing the full force of a Covenant retrieval squad down on our heads. Three Zealots had rushed in, chasing us down as we fled through the corridors. My friend's access card had served us well, having closed off several doors before now, but it was no longer looking quite as good. We'd managed to outrun the grunts and kill a single Zealot, plus another I managed to incapacitate with a shot to the leg, but the last was still coming, and we were in no position to reload.

The hissing of plasma cutting through the door like a hot knife through butter filled us with dread. My friend, lagging behind me by a small distance, clutched the case like it was his last hope in life. We rounded a corner, and the exterior door appeared before us. My friend fumbled for his key card.

"Toss me the case! Just get that door open!" He looked at me in shock, and did so. I almost stumbled as I caught the thing; it was heavier than I expected. The agent pulled ahead and slashed the card through its scanner, allowing the bigger, heavier doors to slide open, agonisingly slowly. By the time I reached them, there was just enough room to vault through, so I did.

The cold hit me like a brick wall, rushing on in one heavy wave, breaking like the tide over my face. The weather had worsened, now a rushing swirl of cutting snowflakes.

It did little to soothe my burning lungs, but we were nearly there. Stealing a glance backward, I saw the Zealot round the previous corner. Mandibles splayed, sword brandished, he was gaining on us.

Too fast. Far too fast.

For a terrible moment, I thought that this might be my end. I would be cut to pieces, and either left to freeze in the snow, or fed to the troop's Jackals.

We began our struggle up the hill, the ship's engines' whining as they warmed up for departure barely audible over the buffeting of the icy winds, but a beacon of disparate hope nonetheless. Behind us, the heavy thumps of alien feet echoed, spurring us on.

Halfway up, the agent slipped.

He attempted to scramble to his feet, but the slippery patch on which he'd lost his purchase held him tight. He slid on the spot, getting more and more frantic, panic evident on his face. Without a thought, I dropped the case and ran to him, clutching at his clothes and pulling with my full weight. All I succeeded in doing was unsteadying myself, the loose snow under my feet growing unstable.

The Elite was now outside. He took a few steps forward, only to sink deep into the snow, his body too heavy to effectively chase us any further. What relief I felt was short-lived, as he merely swapped his sword for an automatic plasma rifle on his thigh. He sprayed a few shots at us, one splashing but a metre away from us, the snow it hit erupting into a tiny geyser of spitting, bubbling water. The alien continued to wade closer.

We scrabbled at the ground for purchase, throwing ourselves in each direction to avoid fire. Neither of us was armoured. We both knew what even a single, glancing shot would do to our bodies. The projectiles' heat was so great that even a near miss could be the end for us. We had nought but the blizzard for a shield.

As we darted up the hill, the Elite behind us raining cerulean death, I passed the dropped crate, already partially covered in snow. I threw my arms at it and heaved, wrenching it into my grip. Spinning to check the Elite, I saw him pointing his weapon at me hesitantly, as if reluctant to shoot. I began to back-pedal, and he still held his fire. The artefact. He needed it intact.

The agent was a few metres away, but well within stumbling distance. I stepped in front of him, yelling for him to stay behind me. The Elite redoubled his efforts to chase after us, but he couldn't move fast enough. Soon, we were over the hill, tumbling down and bundling into the already fired dropship. All it took was one push of a button, and the ONI vessel took us away into the sky.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"That was some fine thinking there."

Cold, breathless and once again coming down from an adrenaline high, we sat in the cargo hold of the dropship, the crate between us. The autopilot whirred away inside the cockpit, scanning for Covenant patrol craft and plotting the safest route back to the city.

"...Thanks." I panted out, not fully recovered.

"I mean it. Not only did you save the package, but you went back for me too, and probably saved both our hides from all that plasma. I never thought I'd see it, but looks like this merc has honour." I chuckled exhaustedly, not really in a state to do anything else.

We sat in silence for a while, him pulling out a tablet and tapping away at it. After a while, he put it away. "There, your payment's processed. I tagged on a little extra for going the extra mile, too. Ah, don't protest, you deserve it."

"I wasn't about to say anything..."

"Oh well, then. Just take it." He blinked and got up, quickly entering the cockpit. A second later he was back, with something in his hand. "Hey, uh... This is strictly off the record, but you can have this, too if you want it." He held out the object. A memory chip, matt black with an ONI insignia. "It's a copy of our file of you. You might want it for... Ah... Personal security." Naturally, I was suspicious.

"Why would you give me this?"

"Hey, I respect you. Just saying, this thing's got some good data. Quite a few small-time crime lords want you dead, plus one pretty big one. You might need it." I didn't immediately reach out for it. He sighed. "Look, AI know you don't like us guys. I get that. We're secretive, cold, and generally just a load of crooks when it comes to getting what we want. But you gotta understand that we're not all assholes. What we want is for humanity to get through this, by any means necessary. This-" he tapped the crate. "Is gonna help a hell of a lot. You see anyone getting popped in the head by a black suit, you know we're doing it for the greater good."

"You'll forgive me for not taking that at face value."

"Take it however you want. Wars require sacrifices. Thanks to you, these people don't have to be one. You want the data or not?"

I reached out and took the chip. He nodded and went back into the cockpit. I sat and pondered what he said for a moment, as I carefully disassembled the chip. Inside was a memory core, and another module. That went out straight away, and quickly met the heel of my boot. Tracking device.

Whether they're working for the greater good or not, you should never trust an ONI spook.

To this day, I stand by those words.


	4. Chapter 4

**Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 4**

I awoke to total blackness. My head ached, my mouth was dry, and my eyes were sore. I blinked away my grogginess and shifted my body, feeling at my surroundings. It hadn't hit home yet that something was wrong. The pervading chill on my skin worked to rouse me, and I slowly cleared the murk from my mind.

I soon found my hands and feet were bound. This began setting off alarms. I was in a sitting position, my arms behind me, wedged over what I assumed was the back of a chair. My feet were likewise stuck, this time seemingly secured to a bar behind them. Twisting my neck revealed that the darkness was a result of a thickly woven cloth bag over my head, cutting out all light. Panic began rising in my chest. I had been captured. At least that meant that I would survive a while longer. Nobody would go to the bother of capturing me if they just wanted me dead.

Further testing revealed that I would not be detaching myself from the chair, so I sat back and waited, suppressing a rising heart rate and trying to coax out memories of when the abduction must have occurred.

I was on Reach. I remembered going to a bar. Nothing eventful happened there as far as I could recall, but I didn't reach my accommodation... That, and the fact I generally felt like absolute shit at the moment, pointed to a drugging. Someone had given me a knockout toxin while I was distracted, and judging from the general sickness I was feeling, it was probably a full syringe of the stuff.

I heard faint, muffled echoes, disrupting the utter silence, directionless. I stifled my body language, trying to erase any signs of fear. The echoes became louder, clearer, sounding more and more like footsteps, until they suddenly came to a stop. Then followed the creak of a door, the scrape of a chair on the ground, and indeterminate speech. I felt movement at my neck and instinctively flinched, only for the presence to undo some kind of fastening and pull the bag off.

The sudden, harsh light blinded me initially. I blinked and squinted around the room, making out three figures. Two, probably security personnel, moving away from me towards what was presumably the door. The third sat opposite me, hands clasped before them as they leant forward.

"Good morning, Mister Locke. My name is Serin Osman."

My vision now adjusted, I looked to the source of the voice. Serin was a sharp-featured woman of vaguely mid-eastern appearance, dark hair tied back tightly against her skull, wearing a passive, small, but nonetheless vaguely malicious smile. I looked around, looking at my surroundings as well as attempting to glimpse the other two before they left. The room was clean, and almost pure white. An interrogation cell. The two guards... I had been right. Grunts, security assurances wearing standardised bodysuits. Osman was clearly the one in charge. But as they turned to shut the door, I caught the logo on their lapels...

"ONI." I stated flatly as the doors slammed shut, leaving us alone in deafening silence.

"Yes, Mister Locke. An astute observation. But now we've got that out of the way, allow me to explain why you're here." I turned back to her, and raised my hands as best I could, palms out and indulging in a bit of dryness for the first time in a while.

"I'm all ears."

"Wonderful. I'm sure you're aware that we know of your... Activities following your involvement in Agent Delta Foxtrot's asset retrieval mission."

"I am."

"Then you should also be aware that you've been a thorn in our side for quite some time." That made me curious.

"What?" I asked. "How? Haven't I been doing you a favour?" Osman sighed and leant back.

"Mister Locke, all government agencies can be looked at with the viewpoint that it is a human machine. A construct designed to manage and execute necessary changes to its environment pertaining to its area of concern. In the case of the Office of Naval Intelligence..." She fixed me with a look so pointed I wouldn't know whether or not to call it weaponised, and continued. "...It is a very efficient machine. We are good at our job, Mister Locke. That is why we are the ones doing it. Only now, you have appeared to have taken it upon yourself to do it instead."

"I'm sorry?"

"Over the past few years, you've driven our logistics AIs halfway to rampancy and then some. No less than sixteen times have we dispatched agents to eliminate key Covenant targets and had to extract them early because you had already done the job, creating significant, not to mention wasteful, resource consumption ." She sighed and got up from her seat, strolling over to one of the walls.

"The Office of Naval Intelligence is a very efficient, well maintained, and precise machine, Mister Locke, and your activities, though guided by good intentions, have been a proverbial wrench in the gears. This meeting, though somewhat... Unconventional... Represents our attempt to reach out to you, for a partnership of mutual benefit." I blinked.

"This is a job interview."

"Essentially, yes."

"You could have just contacted me. My professional address is public."

"You would have been spooked, Mister Locke, and then we'd have to waste yet more resources on reacquiring your location." I paused, meeting her gaze.

"If you know what I talked to your agent about, then you know I'm not too keen on your organisation."

"I was hoping you'd matured since that meeting. Perhaps this will change your mind." She reached out to the wall, a holographic panel appearing under her fingers. She spoke into it, as if it was an intercom. "Send down the Jericho VII file." My stare got a fraction more fixed.

The wall by Osman lit up with another, much larger holographic display, this one displaying some kind of report. Unsurprisingly, the title read "Battle of Jericho VII". Osman scrolled through the headers to the subtitle "Deployments". There was a large RESTRICTED block over it initially, but it dissolved under her gaze. She gave the display a gentle flick, allowing it to gently drift down, showing the names of every ship, infantry regiment and more deployed in the battle for my homeworld. The battle they had lost, and with it, the lives of millions.

"Your psychological evaluation states that you harbour deep-seated resentment for ONI, and the UNSC as a whole. Obviously this is a result of the loss of your family in the UNSC's failure to stop the glassing of your homeworld. Supplementary data from Agent Delta Foxtrot suggests that your particular disdain for ONI stems from your perceived notion that ONI pulled the strings to withdraw from the battle." She snapped her fingers and the hologram stopped scrolling. "This is emphatically not the case." She pointed at the bottom of the Deployments header. I looked to it.

Deployed: SPARTAN Blue Team

Deployed: SPARTAN Red Team

"Spartan? What is that meant to be?"

"A top-secret UNSC super-soldier programme with a frighteningly good track record and moral implications that would make tabloid journalists froth at the mouth."

"And you're telling me this, a supposed military secret, why?"

"For the same reason you're here, and the same reason I'm here. I'm quite important, Mister Locke, and you should feel flattered that my superior thinks that you're worth my personal attention. You're here because you're valuable, and considered so to such an extent that you have been given the privilege of knowing that the UNSC deployed some of its most valuable assets to the centre of Covenant operations on your planet, carrying a nuclear payload, nonetheless, in an attempt to save it. Regretfully, they did not succeed." It sounded outlandish at best. I wasn't so easily convinced.

"I doubt I'm worth all that. You haven't done anything to counteract my preconceptions. As far as I know, this is all lies."

"Mister Locke, ONI does not go to this much effort for a simple odd job man. You are a uniquely skilled individual. We simply wish to extend a hand to you, offering you the opportunity to continue your work almost completely unchanged, only with government funding, backing and organisation. We would not begin a relationship we would wish to keep and maintain for a significant period of time with lies. I can personally assure you that this project is real, its results continue to operate, and one particular member insisted on watching the glassing of your planet for almost an hour after being extracted. We want you to stand with us, Mister Locke, and are prepared to expose extremely confidential data to this end."

"What if I were to refuse?"

"Then you would immediately be knocked out again and returned to where we found you."

"You're not worried about the information you've just given me?"

"We are not concerned about conspiracy theorists, Mister Locke, no matter how accurate their theories may be. What is one voice in a galaxy full of them?"

"And if I were to accept?"

"You would be untied, briefed, outfitted, given relevant contact details, and immediately sent on your first mission. Over time, we might allow you better access to the relevant files on the battle, depending on your perceived commitment to your new employment."

"..."

"Take your time, Mister Locke. Do not make a rash decision, as the only two ways out of ONI are via retirement... Or body bag."

I had no reason to trust her. She was ONI. But what she was saying made sense. And they certainly weren't going to be stupid enough to lie to me, if I was going to be walking around in their facilities. I'd heard about crazier things than this whilst browsing Waypoint. ONI could give me all the equipment I needed to save people, the structuring and intel to save yet more.

I was disgusted at myself for even considering the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. I still didn't trust ONI, no matter their intentions, but with time and maturity, I'd found my distrust of the UNSC waning anyway. Losing a battle against superior alien forces was at the very least not unforeseeable. There was still a pit of loss in my heart, but the blame only sat where it did because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Plus, the mercenary racket wasn't anywhere near as profitable as it was. Most of my employers had been swept up by the UNSC as they fled the Covenant's approach towards their planetary bases.

Still...

"You're asking me to make a very big decision on very short notice."

"Yes." Unrepentant.

I sat there for a while, eyes down, thinking. Serin sat across from me the whole time, waiting for me. Her expression never wavered.

"...Alright. I'm in."

"Excellent." She signalled for the guards to come back in and release me. Before they arrived, she looked at me again. "One last question. Tell me, how many humans have you killed?" That was a question I had always prepared myself to answer, but never expected to be asked.

"Humans? Seventeen, maybe more. Why?" She smiled, that viper smile that still makes me shiver to this day.

"Well, Agent Locke, you're going to be increasing that total rather rapidly."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

A month later, my position hadn't changed all that much. I had gone full circle, really. The only real differences were that I had a new job, was a few hundred light years away, and the restraints on the chair this time around were significantly less comfortable.

"Talk, you ONI scum!" The burly man before me screamed as he brought his fist swinging against my jaw, sending spikes of pain racing up and down my body.

Say what you like about ONI, (I certainly did), but their hospitality is still a lot better than the Colonial Cooperative Army's.

"I've got nothing to say." I calmly replied. That only seemed to make him more irate. He growled and began pacing again, contemplating his next plan of attack.

My first mission had begun well. I had been dispatched to a backwater colony that had gone dark recently, with seemingly no Covenant involvement. Upon landing, I'd learned that a small Insurrectionist group had somehow managed to shut down the planet's only superluminal communication relay, and somehow went on to defeat the planet's relatively diminutive UNSC garrisons. The word around town was that they were trying to reactivate the old warship graveyard the garrison had been responsible for protecting. The ships were a few hundred years old, no match for modern UNSC frigates, let alone anything the Covenant had to offer, but could still threaten and possibly even assault UEG fringe worlds.

ONI command was not pleased to hear this, so I was ordered to nip it in the bud. In the luggage I'd brought with me was what initially seemed to be an eccentric narcotics smoking kit, a fancifully-designed array of tubes and pipes, but in actual fact, when reassembled, the components locked together into a deadly weapon. A Hard Sound rifle. Designed with the intention to use high-powered sonic pulses to induce untraceable, fatal organ haemorrhaging at long range. The perfect assassin's weapon. The target was unspecified, but the data packet I later received told me "As many high-ranking Insurrectionist officers as possible." That pretty much meant anyone with a funny symbol on top of the stripes on their shoulder. I'd managed to rationalise these orders. The UNSC didn't need some two-bit Innie group trying to "liberate" the only remaining military industry centres. The UNSC would have to divert ships to deal with the threat, which in turn would lead to the Covenant's push accelerating, which would result in the death of even more civilians then there would have been if the ships had not been diverted. By ending these lives, I was saving far more. Hell, I might even be saving our species.

At least that was what I told myself. ONI sat entirely within the grey between moral and immoral, never shifting, never exposing itself to either side in its entirety. I was doing its work in hope of the good it might bring. For the lives that might be saved. Taking life to prolong those of others. I hoped it was worth it, because I was far too deep down the rabbit hole by now.

The first target was obvious. The leader of the entire movement, General Amadeus Lloyd. He'd grown the movement from barely a street gang into a veritable militia while the UNSC was busy getting killed by the aliens, using a mixture of brutality and inspirational propaganda.

Most of the public thought Insurrectionist activity had halted when the Covenant appeared, a spot of wishful thinking in that we all had a common enemy now. This was not the case. They simply went underground, easily escaping detection now that the UEG was too preoccupied to deal with them. ONI typically maintained at least one mole in each organisation, receiving small data packets in morse code, tapped out and transmitted via tiny boxes linked by quantum entanglement back to ONI HQ. The bandwidth wasn't much good for anything other than simple sentences, but it was generally enough.

The mole here hadn't transmitted in a while, though. I was going in blind. He could have been killed, or simply lost his communicator. Ultimately, it didn't matter. I wasn't to attempt contact. I was an Agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence, yes, but my official job title was more along the lines of "Acquisitions Specialist".

Sitting on the roof of a residential block, waiting for the good general to be carted by on the back of a warthog for one of his little rallies, I thought that was an awfully fancy name for a hitman.

I watched the minutes tick by, letting the sound of marching grow ever closer. The rally turned a corner, stony-faced, fatigue-clad soldiers bringing up the front, and in the back, a host of three Hogs, trundling along behind. Two had guns mounted, flanking the central one, where the general stood, stoic and proud as he was carted through the quietened streets for a weary populace, wind blowing through his long grey hair.

I shouldered my weapon. The beauty of hard sound weaponry was that the unique brand of tissue damage it produced was only identifiable via autopsy, and even then, few would recognise it. Most doctors would write it off as a stroke or heart attack. Not to mention it was effectively silent unless you happened to hit someone in the ear.

The basic optics provided for me weren't entirely suited for my range, the magnification uncomfortably high, but I made do, scanning over the crowd of soldiers, seeking their leader. Whilst doing so, however, I noticed something odd. An officer, leading the march, had a plasma pistol on his hip. Flicking over the rest of the procession, there was an extremely alarming amount of Covenant weapons being carried in general, by everyone from commanders to sergeants, ranging from pistols to full-on rifles.

This was wrong. Covenant weapons were available on the black market, yes, but they were few in number and extremely expensive, even broken ones fetching hundreds of thousands of credits. How did some second-rate militia leader manage to get his hands on so many?

As I flicked my view around incredulously, I heard a creak from behind me. The hatch I'd gotten here through. I rolled over, seeing a shaven head emerge from the hatch, followed by a fatigue-clad body. I'd been ratted out.

He raised a weapon, and I swung mine around, but he was faster. Two darts shot from his weapon, stabbing into my chest, and arcs of pain shot through me, my muscles spasming and clenching, soon leaving me with not even the breath to scream. Everything went black, and I awoke in the company of the fine gentleman who at that moment began beating me bloody.

They'd recovered my weapon intact, and although they lacked the bio-identification necessary to fire it, it was a dead giveaway as to my involvement by the government. So, they set about torturing information out of me. Five minutes in, he'd given me a fair beating, interspersing the blows with inane questions, my name, my rank, that sort of thing. Each got a smart-ass answer, and the hits got harder. By the end, they were hard enough for me to taste blood, but he had yet to get really serious.

It wasn't my first time, but I knew I wouldn't last long, if the array of grisly instruments placed just out of arms reach were anything to go by. Initially, I tried to buy time by asking my own questions, working ineffectually at the zip-lock ties around my wrists.

"How'd you get ahold of so many plasma weapons?"

"None of your business, mister agent. The general has his contacts."

"I doubt any amount of speeches will win you several million credits worth of stolen alien weapons. What's really going on here?"

"I said it's none of your business. I'm asking the questions here. Now shut your mouth before I shut it for you." He selected a particularly sharp implement from the tray beside him, and began brandishing it at me.

"Now, mister agent, what can you tell us about why you're here?"

"I'm here to kill the General. That's it." The blunt sincerity in my voice seemed to convince him.

"That's it? No data recovery? No getting your mole out of here?" He seemed almost disappointed. I decided to push this card as far as possible.

"We don't even have a mole here." I lied. "Not important enough."

"But... We... I... No, no, you're lying to me. Damn, those big-shot commanders of yours know how to pick 'em."

"I'm not lying."

"Well, if you are, you ONI lot must have shit for brains. We're the biggest revolutionary front this side of the Orion arm. Now, enough games..." He approached with the blade. This was the point at which I was probably supposed to bite my suicide pill, but I didn't have one, and was unlikely to have done so anyway.

He held the blade to my skin, resting it lightly, edge first. "...Tell us everything you know about the defence placements in all the UNSC fortress worlds nearby." I had to laugh. He was asking for information that I really and truthfully did not have.

"You think they give an assassin that kind of information? I don't know anything."

"I... Grr... Come on, you have to know something." He was getting exasperated, pushing the edge into my skin.

"I'm sorry. I don't."

"Bullsh-eeeeerrrrrkkkk!" His rebuttal was cut short, and he briefly spasmed, collapsing to the ground. Behind him stood the exact profile of our mole, short and weaselly, with intense, squinty eyes, holding a Humbler shockstick.

"You're damn lucky the general wanted to brag about his prize, or you'd have been stabbed full of truth serum and dumped in a ditch before I even knew you were here." He muttered as he put the stun weapon away, picking up a knife from the tray table and getting to work on my bindings.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet, you've got to get us out of here. You brought an evac bird, right? Job like yours, in and out?" He finished cutting my hands free, and moved to the tie around my ankles. I rubbed at the marks around my wrists as I replied.

"Yes. I've got a Pelican two clicks away from the city limit. There's an Assault Prowler in orbit waiting to pick me, or us now, up."

"Fan-bloody-tastic." He grunted as my feet were freed. "Two clicks? More like five from here. With you a wanted man? Goddammit..."

"We should move as soon as possible. If they find him-" I gestured to the unconscious torturer. "-like this, they'll sound the alarm."

"Help me stuff him in the cupboard there. That'll buy us ten minutes before they come looking for us. Hang on, if we tie him up, it'll be fifteen." He went looking for more restraints, and I began to drag the man in the general direction of the cupboard. I was halfway before I smelt the stench.

"Ugh! God, has he..." I looked down. The shock had made the man wet himself.

"Huh? Oh, right, yeah. The unconscious setting does that sometimes."

"It stinks. What do they drink around here?"

"You don't want to know. They get it out of an indigenous creature. Believe me, it smelt worse when it went in his front end than it does now."

I grimaced and dragged him to the cupboard, my new friend then tying him up, gagging him and helping me bundle him inside. Before we shut the doors, I grabbed the man's pistol, while my friend went to scout the area. He checked the corridor, and we were out.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Garage. We steal a hog, drive like maniacs, and get the hell off this rock before anyone catches us."

"And go home empty handed?"

"If that's what it takes, yes."

"I can't leave now. This is my first mission, I can't go back without something of note."

"You got a death wish? We have to go now!"

"Something's wrong here. You've seen all those Covenant weapons. If they can get their hands on things like that, who knows what else they might be able to get. This is a significant security risk."

"Argh... Fine, stay, do whatever you want. Give me the bird coordinates, and the contact frequency for the Prowler. If you're not back by sundown, or a patrol gets too close, I'm getting the hell off this stinking planet."

"Fair enough." We stopped, and I tapped some numbers into his handheld. "Good luck."

"Keep your luck to yourself. You need it more. If you want the general, he'll be in his office. North side of the complex."

And we went our separate ways. Fortunately, the base's population seemed to be mostly distracted in the mess hall, judging by the noise, having captured the ONI assassin and brought them that one crucial step closer to liberating the colonies. I snuck by the hall unnoticed, and soon found my way to the General's quarters. Fortunately for me, he had it signposted.

Coming up to the door, my new gun raised, it sounded like the General was having a meeting. Pressing my eye to the crack between the doors, I strained my ears to hear their words.

The general was sitting at a board table in a contrastingly drab office. The walls were the same concrete grey as all the others in the base, despite what looked like a painting, judging by my slim sliver of vision. He seemed focused on the space directly in front of him, presumably his subordinates.

"...And you're sure that the Covenant aren't interested in attacking colonies without entrenched UNSC forces? You'll leave us alone?"

...Or maybe not his subordinates. He used 'you'... Who was with him? I shuffled quietly to try and get a view, but to no avail, saying myself with the rest of the conversation. There was a quiet beeping sound, and the room was quiet for a second.

"...Yes." A strained, slightly hissy voice. An alien? Dealing with Insurrectionists? The Covenant had made it clear that they wanted the entirety of Humanity dead shortly after first contact, so why were they...

"Excellent. It's heartening to hear that such an advanced and enlightened civilisation shares our view on the tyrannical government our people have suffered." More beeping. A longer pause.

"...Yes. Our weapons... For you. For us... Your metals."

"Of course. We're not so backward that we don't understand trade, you know!" The General chortled. "Just let me get the documents, and you can load up your ship to the brim." He got up, and turned directly to me, making for the door. I fell back and scrambled to my feet, pre-emptively pointing my gun at the door. I took a deep breath.

"You know, I really can't thank you enou-"

BANG

As soon as the General opened the double doors, I pulled the trigger, putting a bullet square in his forehead. His lifeless body fell back, chunks of viscera staining the floor, and the doors swung open. I stepped in, shutting the doors behind me, and immediately swung to face the other side of the table.

It was an alien, unlike any other I'd seen before. Grey-green, moist and clammy, and humanoid in shape, a strange beard-like crest lining the jaw, and a flattened nose with four widened nostrils. Covering its body was an odd black jumpsuit, leaving the hands and feet exposed. In its clawed hand, it held a small, distinctly Covenant unit, smooth and purple. It looked at me in shock, like a deer in the headlights.

For a second we stared each other down, until we both moved. It ran for the door, and I caught it on the way. It was a good bit smaller than me, and weaker, so I had little trouble overpowering it. I was soon holding it down, gun pointed at its face.

"Make any noise, and I'll shoot you." I demanded in hushed tones. Trembling, the alien glanced at the module, still clutched in its hand. Was it a translator? I released the arm, and it pressed the item to its head, listening. Then it moved it to its mouth, whispering in an alien language, and the device beeped. It released it, pressed it back to its ear, and spoke in hurried, broken English.

"Ikrl not your enemy! Ikrl bring weapons!"

"I'm not with them. Why are you bringing the weapons? The Covenant hates humans." The same routine again, ear, mouth, beep, ear, speech.

"Ikrl not care about Covenant! Ikrl is Yohnet! Not true Covenant! Walk the path, not fight the war!" A non-military Covenant species? Trading with humans? Why?

"Then why trade with humans?"

"Ikrl need to feed! Sell humans Covenant weapons, sell Covenant human's metal!" I took a second to process this. Then it clicked.

"You're making money behind the Covenant leader's backs."

"Ikrl make money, live better! Humans die anyway! Weapons weak!" Selling old Covenant weapons to human Insurrectionists for an inflated price... The... thing, Ikrl was smart. I wondered how feasible it was to be able to get him off-planet. A Covenant prisoner, with a functional translator. The first was already rarer than four-leaf clovers, but the second? A means to reliable communication? If I could pull this off, the data he could provide could turn the tide of the war!

Then again, it wasn't going to be easy. Intimidation seemed to have worked so far.

"You're coming with me. Cooperate and I won't kill you. But if you try to stop us, I will." Ikrl responded with frantic nodding after the translation was complete, which satisfied me. I ushered him out of the doors, and began running, the alien in front of me, down the corridors, following the signs to the garage.

Pretty soon, it seemed that a little less talking would have been more prudent. We passed the mess hall just as the troops were finishing their celebration. Racing past, it didn't take long for one of them to recognise me, and soon the whole hall was running after us.

Jostling and cramped as they were, they had trouble keeping up. We reached the garage with them in tow, bursting through the doors, slamming them shut and twisting the latch, locking the heaving rabble out for at least thirty seconds.

The garage was a repurposed warehouse, by the looks of it, tacked onto the side of the complex I'd just escaped. Fortunately, there was only one person there, a man covered in oil, holding a clipboard.

"Hey, who are y-" I smacked the butt of my gun into his temple, and he he toppled over. I grabbed a random set of keys from the desk he'd been standing at, frantically glancing at the number on the keyring. Finding the matching Hog, I bundled my terrified cargo in the passenger seat, revved the engine and shot out through the open exit, just in time to hear the doors burst open behind us.

I drove recklessly fast through the streets, following my limited sense of direction through the city streets to where I'd parked the Pelican.

It didn't take long for the soldiers to catch up. They knew the land better. Pretty soon, I was being harassed from behind, three more Hogs trying to overtake, knock me off course. They'd stowed their guns for now, but that was likely to change as soon as we got out of the city. Fortunately, none of them had mounts.

Managing to stay ahead, I watched as the buildings got smaller and sparser, eventually giving away altogether. It was at that point they opened fire.

A barrage of plasma shots erupted from the passengers, pinging off the car's chassis. One hit the frame behind me, hissing and dissipating. I glanced at the hit area; the burning was minimal. It seemed the weapons really were significantly weakened. Still a darn sight better than bullets though.

Ikrl sat to my side, clutching the seat, and evidently terrified. Luckily, it seemed we were on target to-

Barely a mile away, there was the silhouette of a Pelican taking off.

"Wh- No, no, no no!" I cursed. We were so close! How could we possibly-

A thought struck me.

"Ikrl! Do you have a ship? Where is it?" The alien gave me another terrified look, translated it, and jerked a finger backwards. I grit my teeth. This was probably not going to work.

"Hold on."

I hit the brakes, hard. The Hog bucked, skidding on the road, and the three pursuing cars swerved to avoid us. One went tumbling, the occupants strewn about, and the others simply skidded in circles. I reversed, span the car around, and hit the accelerator again, taking off back the way we came.

It took a while for the two remaining cars to catch up again, and by that point we were back inside the city. Ikrl was waving me this way and that, directing me through the streets expertly. I found myself wondering many times he had been here.

At last reaching the place, smashing though a wire fence on the way in, we reached a derelict building area, and we both dismounted, leaving the Hog draped across the gap to block our pursuers. Dashing for the building, plasma zipping over our heads, we barely made it.

Once inside, Ikrl pressed a button on his translator, and a Phantom appeared on the ground, as if from thin air. Active camouflage. The deployment bay doors hissed open and we clambered aboard, letting them close us in as the crazed rebels finally made it inside, dim purple lighting illuminati g the cramped space. Ikrl bundled his way into the cockpit, not even bothering to shut the door behind him, and immediately began takeoff.

The floor rumbled underneath me as the antigravity drive activated, then lurched as we took to the air. I watched the ground sink away through the tiny window as we soared off into the distance.

I took a deep breath. We'd done it. The good General was dead, and I was bringing home not only a Covenant captive, but also a Phantom, in full working order. My first mission had gone pretty well, all things considered.

Now to finish it.

I came up behind Ikrl, who looked parched, like the escape had made him sweat out all the moisture in his body. He was shaking slightly. I laid a hand on his shoulder and he froze.

"I apologise for threatening you earlier. I won't do it again, unless you pull a gun on me." The alien settled down slightly on hearing the translation. "Now, I'd like you to head to the following coordinates..."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Impressive work, Agent Locke." My handler aboard the Prowler said, closing off my debriefing. "I'll inform my superiors immediately. They'll be very happy to hear about the assets you recovered."

"Thank you, sir."

"And you said that you don't believe that the CCA's forces were particularly extensive?"

"Their numbers at that outpost were quite low, sir. I believe they overwhelmed the UNSC garrison via the superior technology they acquired, rather than by numbers."

"Good to hear. With the head of operations gone, hopefully morale will fall and the group will disband. Good job, Agent. Dismissed."

I saluted and left the room. I admit, I expected a much greater sense of self-loathing at the point I turned in my first mission for ONI. But there wasn't any. I genuinely believed that I'd done some good here. One man dead, who knows how many saved. It was the same thing I'd been doing for years. Even Ikrl had been treated civilly when I brought him in. It was all good.

The door to the briefing room opened for me, shutting again when I stepped through, and I was surprised to see the mole waiting for me.

He looked up, and grinned sheepishly.

"Ah, hey, I... Uh, sorry for abandoning you. Couldn't see it was you at the wheel on the first Hog, and I kind of panicked."

"I don't blame you. It was pretty hectic."

"Thanks. But you pulled it off pretty spectacularly, huh? Alls well that ends well."

"Indeed."

"Yeah. You know what, let me buy you a drink. Or at least bribe the mess sergeant to give you a drink."

"Thanks."

"No worries. Hey, you said this was your first mission, right? Like, ever?"

"First for ONI, but I've got several years experience as a freelance assassin."

"Yikes. Hardcore. I have a feeling from now on, they're going to be giving you the tough ones. But hey, keep this up and you'll be a Lieutenant in no time."

"Here's to hoping."

And at the end of the day, a few years later, I got something far, far better than just a rank.


	5. Chapter 5

**Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 5**

Just because the war was over didn't mean that us ONI operatives had less work to do. Quite the opposite. Leading up to the end of the war had been hectic enough, what with securing assets on Reach, carefully regulating public knowledge and panic, and even that monstrous dossier on Thel'Vadamee that ended up being invalidated a month later, but now it was even worse. Everyone in the UNSC was working overtime to get humanity back on its feet before the former Covenant species finished squabbling over their old technology, and ONI was right in the middle of that. There were plans knocking around for all sorts of things, far too many for one person to keep track of. New AI models, a massive capital ship, etc, etc. I had done a great deal of field work prior to the Battle of Earth, earned a promotion to Lieutenant Commander, and was now allowed the luxury of sitting at a desk all day doing paperwork.

In all honesty, I missed the field. As silly as it sounded, I was a man of action. I wanted to do things, make things happen, be on the knife edge of progress. Not signing off orders for the new people who were doing that now. But I'd been doing it long enough to have resigned myself to my fate, despite still being firmly in my youth. It seemed my maturity had peaked way too early, and I was already old.

I had nearly sunk irreversibly into the mire of paper, bureaucracy and promotions by the time the recruiter came to see me. That's what made it such a pleasant surprise.

It started as a new, foreign presence in my timetable, made known to me by the department management AI. It simply read 'Proposition Meeting'. It was odd, but working for ONI made you expect the odd cryptic note or gesture, usually as a way of one section trying to get one over on the other. I shrugged and decided to wait it out.

The recruiter came into my office at 1:02pm, on the 18th of June, 2556. I remember that so vividly because it was a major turning point in my life, perhaps even the biggest. It marked the point at which I decided to become... More.

He was big. I thought of myself as quite a tall person, but he dwarfed me. Maybe not seven foot, but damned close. His head was shaven, showing a tattoo of a fist clutching a bundle of arrows on one side of his head. To top it off, he wore a slightly unsettling smile, giving one the impression that you weren't quite in on his joke yet.

I gestured for him to take a seat, and he did so, never losing the smile.

"Lieutenant Commander Locke?" He asked, with an implacable eastern European accent. I nodded.

"Warrant Officer Jun-A266." He stretched out a hand to me, shaking mine firmly. "I'm here because you have been recommended by one of your superiors for participation in a special project."

"What kind of special project?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Have you ever heard of Spartans?" I took a long, hard look at him. Certain parts of the SPARTAN Projects had been disclosed to the public as a way of regulating panic near the end of the war, pretty much just a way of telling them they still had a hero. Of course, the nitty-gritty details were kept much more closely. Being a Section 3 worker, I was privy to more than the average person, but not much. I'd been allowed under the terms of my employment to access the files on the Spartan deployment to my home planet, Red and Blue teams. Among them, I was surprised to find, was the Master Chief, humanity's saviour himself, attempting to turn back the tide. It hasn't worked, but it was a small comfort that the best of the best had tried and failed to save our planet.

"...Yes, I have heard of the SPARTAN project. Judging by your name and physique, may I presume you were one?"

"It's not possible to simply stop being a Spartan. But yes. I am one."

"And may I ask, what does this have to do with our meeting today?"

"How would you like to be one? A Spartan, I mean."

"...What?"

"Humanity needs heroes right now, Lieutenant, and the higher-ups have greenlit a new, completely ethical Spartan project, taking experienced soldiers with already prodigious capabilities and making them better. You worked as an assassin for years before joining ONI, which is pretty good, performed exceptionally in your field operations during the war, which is better, and have demonstrated a notable inadequacy when it comes to filling out paperwork." I glanced self-consciously down at the papers on my desk, and he chuckled. "The selection process is a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it. We want you to be a super-soldier."

"...What would it entail?"

"You'd immediately be transferred from ONI to the brand new Spartan branch, maintaining your rank in dealings with other branches, but with a new one for strictly Spartan affairs."

"That rank being?"

"Just Spartan. All are equal among humanity's warriors, Lieutenant. After the transfer checks out, you'd be taken to a state of the art surgical facility where you would undergo the augmentations, and remain there for the remainder of the rehabilitation period. After that, you're trained in your new capabilities, outfitted with your own suit of armour, and sent to wherever you're needed. I expect that will be torch-and-burn black ops for ONI."

"This is a big decision."

"It is. Augmentations aren't something that you can remove, Lieutenant. You'll change, permanently, in ways that others might look poorly on. That said, I highly recommend it. It's an incredible feeling, though it does dampen your love life somewhat."

"How long do I have to decide?"

"As long as you need." I decided I liked this man a lot better than my current commander. Osman hadn't given me that space. "The project isn't going anywhere soon, Lieutenant, so take your time. When you have your answer, just contact me. I've sent you a message containing the finer details of the procedures."

"Thank you, sir."

"No need to thank me, Lieutenant. Not yet, at least." He smiled again and got up, waving as he walked out the door.

I immediately checked my message folder and read the attached documents until I knew them backwards.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

It took me a week to make up my mind, but perhaps that's the wrong way to put it. It took me a week to admit to myself that the doubts I was having I had conjured out of thin air to stop my accepting the offer immediately. To be a Spartan! One of a whole new breed of soldiers, humanity's best. Not only was it a sure-fire way back into the field, but having all that power, all that strength... I could do so much more for humanity.

I sent Warrant Officer Jun my confirmation, and he sent back a mostly automated, but slightly personalised reply, remarking on a few of my old mission records he'd been able to get his hands on. Apparently, he liked what he saw. Along with it were the time and place details for my pickup. I was advised to bring a minimal amount of clothing, as by the end of the procedures they would no longer fit me.

Strangely, I found that exhilarating. I gathered up a few essentials from my living space along with a copy of my medical records and eagerly awaited the transport.

A standard slipspace journey later, I stepped into the clean, white halls of the "Spartan Factory" as my handler put it. They ushered me through the immaculate corridors into a lecture hall, filled with dozens of other candidates, idly chatting. I took a seat and made small talk, but I was far too excited to concentrate.

After a short time, the lights dimmed, and the door at the front of the hall opened. The room went silent, and every eye watched the person on the other side emerge.

He was wheelchair-bound, his legs visibly thin and atrophied even through the screening layer of his business suit. He was bald, looking perhaps forty in age, though he carried himself with a youthful dignity, and the twinkle in his eye denoted anything but weariness. He wheeled himself to the centre of the stage, and turned to face us. For a moment he was silent. Then:

"Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. You may call me Commander Musa. You are here because you are the best men and women the UNSC has. Not only are you all distinguished veterans of the Army, Navy, Air Force and so on, you have each displayed great skill, poise, and honour acting in the steadfast defence of Earth and her colonies." He paused.

"I too, was once selected to fulfil a role similar to that which you have been chosen for. However, the process was not kind to me..." He gestured to his legs, "...And thus I now live as I do. I was one of the original Spartans, ladies and gentlemen, but did not make it to field duty. In that time, it was a great sacrifice to make, one which carried considerable risk. I was lucky. Many did not survive. I, and a few others, did, but could not attain the required state, a pinnacle of human ability. Those that could... They became legends." He turned and began to wheel to one side of the stage.

"You need not fear ending up like me. We are now capable of much greater things, and barring the consequences of your own actions, I promise each and every one of you will see battle again. And though you may not become legends out of necessity, as the Spartans of before did, you will be given ample opportunity to try." He stopped. His voice turned quiet. I strained to hear him.

"With so many of the original Spartans gone, humanity is bereft of heroes..." He smiled widely. "You shall be those heroes."

Our applause was thunderous.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

After the speech came the boring bit. A thorough biological test period. We were told that the new augmentation process was based on chemical and synthetic-organic modification, unlike the old programme, which was more reliant on invasive non-organic implants and coatings. This meant that the process was much safer, but also required a thorough analysis of our own bodies to make the necessary tweaks to the formula, ensuring there would be no rejection of new tissues or adverse reactions to the chemical cocktails they'd be pumping through our veins.

Over the few days it took for them to do that, we pottered around the facility's living quarters, socialising. The overwhelming feeling was excitement. Everyone here was effectively waiting to be made into a superhero. There were a few... Classes, for lack of a better word, on what we might experience after the procedures were complete. We were expected to take a few days to learn how to walk again, than one more to run as we acclimatised our muscles. Our diet was to be strictly controlled and our excretions and activities monitored to make sure our digestion was working as planned. Once fully adjusted, our training would begin.

Soon, we were waiting for our turns in the operating room. One by one, we were called inside. My turn came, and my stomach was alight with butterflies. They lay me down on a table, placed a mask over my face and anaesthetised me. As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I was dimly aware of the doctors coming and going, changing IV bags, putting me under so they could open me up and put something in, take something out. The time passed in a haze, but over the many bouts of surgery I could feel the changes, each coming one by one. One day I suddenly felt my feet dangling over the end of the table, when I'd previously been laid completely on it. Another time I was vaguely aware that my gut sat differently. Yet another, my vision was suddenly clearer, sharp and focused.

After a total period of what we later found out had been three days, it was finally over. I awoke clear-headed for what felt like the first time in forever. Instantly, there was someone at my side, telling me to take it slow, only to move when I felt I could, etcetera. They helped me sit up, and I was struck by my own height. Even sat on a low hospital bed, I towered over the doctors.

A few of us were more arrogant than the others, and instantly tried to be up and about. With a completely reworked nervous system, new centre of gravity, enhanced muscles and a newfound breadth that left them extremely liable to bump into things, they didn't get far. After that, we took it slow, learning how to move and tense again. Eating was surprisingly difficult too, many a Spartan crushing cutlery and drink cartons by accident. It was a humbling feeling, having so much power but with the coordination of a baby.

As we got more confident in our bodies, we moved more, and that was when the humble mentality began to fade. As our balance improved, our friendly races across the indoor plaza turned from waddles into jogs, and then from jogs into sprints. And we kept getting faster... There were weightlifting competitions too, again starting light, though not quite as light as the running, and moving onto duplicates of our already quite prodigious new weights.

Faster and faster, stronger and stronger. Some greeted the new power with incredulity, some even with fear. How far could we push ourselves? When would we cap out? What about when we got into the suits? Exactly how much power could we wield, and were we fit to do so?

The abysmal failure that was the first combat training exercise was a pleasing trip back to the ground. We'd been pitted against regular marines, no special equipment, just stun rounds on both sides, and though admittedly heavily outnumbered, we had been crushed. Asking a lot of us about it would have gotten you answers along the lines of tactical errors, or guerrilla warfare gone wrong, but what actually happened was that we all ran in different directions, and got picked off one by one. Once again, incredibly humbling. I personally was picked off whilst attempting to flank a small group of our adversaries, after a fellow Spartan leaping between the tops of the environmental blocks behind me drew attention to my position. I took three down with me. Not nearly enough.

Commander Musa was not pleased to say the least. We were given a long speech on the meaning of teamwork, our human vulnerability, and so on. Superhuman we were, invincible we were not. Surprisingly, we took it to heart. There was something rather sincere about Musa. The way he spoke to us, it was almost like a disappointed father. Like he had expected so much more from us, hoped we'd exceed his expectations. You wanted to help him, even if the feeling was slightly creepy. I found myself musing whether it was because he wished he could have been a fully-fledged Spartan. Perhaps he wanted us to be better than his generation. Perhaps he thought of this as his way of defending Earth, not with his own gun, but by the creation of a new breed of fighters. I shared this with my squadmates over dinner, and was met with sullen nods.

The next training session went very differently. In my squad of five, there was one casualty. The fifty marines pitted against us went down by the dozen. The other fire teams did well, though not nearly as well as us. There was a feeling of pride, of power, in our victory. That with our new strength, we could still use the methods of the ordinary soldier, and become better for it. Pretty soon the other teams caught on, and we were sweeping the marines without any casualties on our side. The Commander started issuing different weapons, to us and the marines, seeing how we coped in different combat scenarios. Outside the training area, scientists with clipboards and datapads noted down quirks, events, anything of note. Apparently they were trying to determine what model of armour we'd be given further down the line. One of us even managed to get ahold of a few supply manifests on the different Mjolnir variations. There were a staggering amount, each more exotic than the last, each specialised to a different theatre of war. Late at night, some of us would cluster around our resident hacker, peering over their shoulder as they showed off wireframe blueprints for some of the suits. Watching from afar, it looked like children poring over a toy catalogue.

"I hope I get that one..."

"Man, that looks cool..."

"Wow, look at that helmet. What the hell is that horn meant to be?"

Of course, it didn't take long for Warrant Officer Jun to catch wind of it, and he confiscated the data. However, he didn't chastise anyone.

"You won't have to wait much longer." He said with a smirk. "But you won't be operating the fancy stuff just yet. You have to prove you can handle the basics first."

Despite the warning to temper our expectations, the kids with a catalogue simile got a lot more apt after that, because it rapidly became a lot like the run-up to Christmas. Unrepentant, our hacker managed to download some specs for the basic Mjolnir model, designation RECRUIT. This time, he spread the data around so we wouldn't be seen colluding, and I'll admit, I spent a good few ours scrutinising it. It was basic, yes, but the statistics were incredible. The suit amplified our strength to eight times our normal capacity, linked in through our new, specialised neural interfaces to drop our reaction time to ridiculous levels, and weighed in at two hundred and sixty kilograms. The armour plating was almost immune to small arms fire, with a thick, high-capacity energy shield and dissipative thermal gel layer for absorbing all but the heaviest plasma damage. It could survive an exoatmospheric reentry. It was practically a weapon of mass destruction.

And that was just the model that still had the training wheels on. Unbelievable. There were variants that served as full-size battlenet nodes, could completely mask the wearer's appearance on almost any known portable sensor system, and even one that could meld the user's consciousness with an onboard AI, allowing for nothing less than brutal battlefield efficiency. And the technology was constantly improving, with more and more corporations trying their hand at building new models every day, all of them competing for the UNSC's attention and funding. A lot of investment was going into this new Spartan programme, into us. It struck me how high their hopes must have been for us to succeed. The pressure to meet those expectations eased off a fair bit when we first stepped into the suits.

One morning, we were instructed to meet the supervisors in the cargo bay. Inside, we found a team of engineers building some kind of rack, composed of several separate bays, each sprouting inward-facing robotic arms and winches. As soon as we arrived, we were given metallic jumpsuits and told to get dressed. The Mjolnirs had arrived, fresh off the assembly line.

After awkwardly and excitedly clawing our way inside them, we stepped into the racks, and the robotics went to work. The boots rose from the floor, clasping around my feet like a mollusc, the rack's many arms clipping, bolting and fastening heavy metal plates all over my body. The chestpiece descended in two parts, connecting together and encasing my chest in hyperdense alloy. One by one, the parts connected and powered on, shield emitters lighting up, diagnostic systems thrumming. I could feel them all, tingling on the edge of my mind through my neural link, a hive of activity surging just above my skin.

At last, the helmet came down over my head, neatly meeting the lip of the bodysuit and pressurising with a soft hiss. For a moment, I waited in darkness, staring out through a blank, glassy visor. I then felt a wave pass through the suit, and the HUD powered up, presenting a clean blue view of the world.

The rack deactivated and set me down. I stepped out, and once again, it struck me how big I was now. The suit had given me another inch or so, and the engineers around me looked positively diminutive. There was the feeling of my weight, too. My every movement felt... Heavy, as one would expect if you were carrying forty-kilo weights on each limb. But despite their weight, I still felt incredibly fast, incredibly powerful. Like I could wrestle a wildebeest, outrun a horse, flip a Warthog with my finger. It was one hell of a rush. I looked up from myself to see engineer approaching me.

"Don't worry if it's not all you were expecting, Spartan, the training wheels are still on. First-time users have been known to hurt themselves if we leave the force multipliers and neurokinetics on full blast." Under the helmet, my eyes went wide. I struggled to keep my voice measured.

"It gets better?" She grinned.

"That's the spirit. Now, I'm reading clean diagnostics, but I'm getting some gyroscopic calibration errors." She held up a PDA with a glowing red light, raising it above her head. "Please look at this light..."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

After fiddling with the suit controls for a while, managing to make my body coordinate in a number of unsettling ways, we were walked to the training room in groups. Inside were bits of reinforced gym equipment, clearly built to test our capabilities. Me and the other few who accompanied me began, slowly at first, then accelerating. Inbuilt speedometers and coordimetric systems tracked our every move, cataloging every exertion. We ran on treadmills, watching in amazement as the numbers climbed to inhuman levels, filled dumbbells to their limit with the biggest weights we could find and tossed them about like juggler's balls. The testers watched from afar and slowly, they released the restrictions. Our strength grew so much that we ran out of weights to test with, and had to start lifting each other, much to the researchers' amusement. We threw bars of steel at one another and plucked them out of the air like they were moving in slow motion. More newly armoured Spartans joined over time, gradually being brought up to speed and revelling in the novelty. It was perhaps the most unconventional fun I've ever had.

But all good things must come to an end. We left the room completely drunk on power, so much so that it was jarring to go back to just being an Olympic athlete when the suits were removed, rather than a flat-out superhero. There was a toast to Commander Musa in the bar that night, to the wonderful gift he'd given us all and the green Earth that we'd protect with it. It was a heartening sight, but one couldn't help but fear for what we might do without proper caution. But proper combat training would remedy that. Everything else in the project had been handled impeccably, and I had no doubt this would be too. That night, we drank, and none of us could wait for the morning.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Several weeks later, we departed the facility, fresh-faced and ready for action. Whilst we drew a great many funny looks from the locals on our way to the spaceport, as a group of muscle-bound, seven-foot squaddies are bound to do, very few of us cared. We all left with a sense of purpose.

Most of us were being posted to the UNSC Infinity, the new super-warship being sent out to scout unknown Forerunner installations. A few among us were going into security for important dignitaries or researchers, and I was on my way back to ONI. Not to resume duties, mind you. I was officially part of the Spartan branch now. That didn't mean Osman couldn't boss me around, though.

No, I was heading back to receive my parting gift from the organisation. ONI had a hand in the new Spartan branch as much as any of the other agencies, and in this case, it was to do with our use in special operations. And special operations require special equipment. And that just happened to be the speciality of ONI's manufacturing department, the Watershed Division. I was going to pick up a specialised prototype suit designed specifically for the kind of missions I usually undertook. Then, I'd be jumping onto a Prowler and heading off to fix more of the UEG's problems.

Once at the spaceport, we said our fond goodbyes, and headed off to our shuttles. I was being escorted to the Watershed Division testing laboratories in Tau Ceti, whilst they were off to Earth, probably for a few weeks of leave groundside before the Infinity set sail.

Oddly enough, I was happy to be missing that. I wanted to get back in the field. It had been a long time, and once you've been doing it one enough, like I had, a lack of action became an unbearable itch. Some people were haunted by the wars they'd seen. Others missed them. I was one of the latter individuals.

I boarded the Prowler, and was surprised to find myself allocated a cabin to myself. Then I realised why, as my head scraped the ceiling of the main passenger compartments. Once there, I settled down, and began reading my briefing packet. Operation: DELHI. Asset denial against entrenched New Colonial Alliance forces. Requisitions: A set of HUNTER-class Mjolnir GEN2 Powered Assault Armour, BR85 service rifle, M57 Pilum rocket launcher, and twelve remote detonation explosive charges. Fancy stuff. Skimming the rest of the report, I got to the part I was interested in. The suit.

A prototype, but well past the buggy stage of testing. Fitted with the most advanced warfighting technology in human space, as well as a neurally-integrated, top-of-the-line threat assessment/prioritisation subroutine linked to ARTEMIS-class tracking hardware. Graphite black, resolute and slender; sophisticated and lethal in equal measures. I could see myself wearing it for a long time.

Take-off began, and I put myself through the motions. Sit down, seatbelt, pinch of powdered ginger for space-sickness. I soon found myself rereading the briefing. This was a one-man mission. The opposition was a full Insurrectionist garrison, no doubt armed to the teeth. Previously, I would have called that a suicide mission, but now I wasn't sure. It was still obviously a risky mission, and I'd do well to approach with stealth and caution, but if they found me... I almost felt I could hold my own. Dozens of men, armed and vying to kill me, a single target. And I felt I could take them.

Was this arrogance? I legitimately wasn't sure. I was strong, yes, but how strong? How far could I push myself? What, on the field of battle, could I consider courage, and in turn, what would recklessness be?

"Take it slow, Jameson." I told myself. "Live and learn."

Reading it again, more questions arose. I was being deployed on this mission in the same way one might deploy a Scorpion tank. Was I just that? A weapon? A tool? In a way, I had been since I signed up with ONI, so it was a bit late to be having doubts about that. I knew the NCA was a dangerous, violent militia, and had to be stamped out, but what would the Spartan branch have me doing after this? Would I be a hammer, striking down with great force on the slightest of irregularities, or a scalpel, as I had once been, excising the cancer from the Galaxy? Probably the former, as I was a bit big for infiltration missions now. Was that so bad? What exactly was my purpose now?

We accelerated, and I braced for the trip up into the sky, breaching escape velocity and for a brief moment, floating in place before the gravity generators kicked in. The briefing packet fell open in front of me as it dropped back down to the table. A word stuck out at me. Hunter.

...Yes. I was a hunter. I had been since I was young. Hunting the truth, hunting for vengeance, hunting the truth. And now, clad in steel and fuelled by starfire, I hunted the enemies of the UNSC. By degrees, working at ONI had brought me over to their side. If any human organisation was fit to manage our space, it was the UEG. That didn't mean it was always right, or always did its job properly, but it was the best we had. And that made it worth protecting.

I am Spartan Jameson Locke, hunter of the enemies of humanity. If you would do innocent people harm, I will track you down. I will find you, and I will deal with you by any means necessary. Despots, warlords, villains of the cosmos, you would do well to know my name. For I will be swift, and without mercy. For I will hunt you to the ends of the universe.


End file.
